Disobedience: The Sousa Mendes Story
Commemorating the 75th anniversary of Kristalnacht
Monday, November 4th, 6:30 PM
at Clifton Park - Halfmoon Library
Clifton Park Chabad presents the feature film Disobedience: The Sousa Mendes Story. This powerful film tells the true story of Aristides de Sousa Mendes — the Portuguese Consul in Bordeaux — who in 1940 defied the direct orders of his government and granted visas out of Occupied France to thousands of refugees. His courageous actions have been described by Historian Yehuda Bauer as "perhaps the largest rescue action by a single individual during the Holocaust."
Introduction by Harry Österreicher son and grandson of Sousa Mendes Visa Recipients and representative of the Sousa Mendes Foundation.
Reflections by Varda (Freudmann) LeMonds daughter and granddaughter of Sousa Mendes visa recipients.
495-0772 [email protected]
Felix Freudmann, at the time 22 years old, was among those saved. In June 1940, shortly before de Sousa-Mendes was recalled to Lisbon, Felix Freudmann and members of his family (parents and siblings) were among those who received life-saving de Sousa-Mendes visas, enabling them to continue to Portugal. They received the visas in the south of France after a harrowing escape by car from Antwerp, just ahead of Nazi forces advancing across Western Europe.
This story, however, has a happy ending. With their visas, the Freudmann family made its way across the French-Spanish border, through Spain and into Portugal. In Lisbon they boarded a ship to New York. Once on American soil, Felix Freudmann presented himself to the US army and volunteered to fight the Nazis. Fluent in eight languages, he was assigned to military counter-intelligence and eventually was posted back in Antwerp. His specific assignment there was to uncover Nazi collaboration among some Flemish people and to interrogate suspected Flemish collaborators in their own languages and dialects.
After the war, Felix Freudmann married Lillian Cohen in a rooftop ceremony in Tel Aviv in 1951. Over the next 11 years the couple had five children - David, Aviva, Varda, Dan and Gideon. In the early 1950s, Felix decided to change occupations from diamond dealer (the family business in Antwerp) to academic. Using the GI Bill of Rights, he obtained his PhD in French Literature of the 17th Century at Columbia University. He went on to have a distinguished career as a university professor and author, introducing generations of students to Racine, Moliere, and other greats of French literature of that era.
Felix Freudmann taught at New York University, Skidmore College, Bar Ilan University, Tel Aviv University, and the University of Connecticut. He published many books and articles, not only in his field of French literature but also commentaries on Jewish issues and American life.
